Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan

Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan was a Deobandi Islamist militant group that was formed in December 2007 in Pakistan. The organization, unlike the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, was never a legitimate government, and they predominantly targeted the government of Pakistan in its attacks. With 25,000 members, the TTP organization was responsible for several suicide bombings, shootings (including a school shooting in Peshawar), and attacks against the Pakistan Army.

History
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan was created in December 2007 by a coalition of insurgent forces that were at war with the Pakistani government since 2004 in the Waziristan War. Consisting mostly of Pashtuns from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally-Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) in northwest Pakistan, the TTP developed into a major organization in the country. Allying with al-Qaeda, the main Taliban in Afghanistan, Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), Lashkar e-Jhangvi, and other Afghan and Pakistani insurgent groups, the TTP were a major terrorist threat in the region. The organization overran several tribal areas in Pakistan, including the Swat Valley, which was subjected to sharia law by the TTP. In the Swat Valley, music, dancing, televisions, computers, CDs, female education, and the shaving of beards was declared illegal, and electronics shops were burnt down by the militants.

The organization was responsible for several terrorist attacks that included suicide bombings, political assassinations, mass shootings, and military attacks against the Pakistan Army, and they were suspected of involvement with the assassination of the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The TTP were targeted by the United States' CIA in UAV drone strikes along with al-Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (among other insurgent groups) in an attempt to assist the government of Pakistan against the terrorists, who fought against the US Army in neighboring Afghanistan in the Afghanistan War. Several Taliban fighters were recruited in Pakistan or hid out there, seeking shelter with the TTP, and the United States saw it neccessary to cut off the Taliban's reinforcement routes by bombing their hideouts in Pakistan. In 2013, the Taliban leader Mohammed Omar died of tuberculosis in Quetta, where the ¨Quetta Shura¨ of the Afghan Taliban made military decisions. The US also killed several TTP leaders like Baitullah Mehsud and Hakimullah Mehsud, but Mullah Fazlullah continued to be a threat.